Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of An Idea

Featuring Mae Ngai, 2018-19 Wayne Morse Chair. Ngai is a professor of Asian American Studies and history at Columbia University.

Her research focuses on immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. Ngai is the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004), which won six major book awards; and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for The Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the Boston Review. Before becoming a historian, she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education. Her upcoming book is Yellow and Gold: The Chinese Mining Diaspora, 1848-1908, a study of Chinese gold miners and racial politics in nineteenth-century California, the Australian colony of Victoria, and the South African Transvaal.